The ‘prison-house’ of terminology? The pros and cons of using terminology in the literature class

 

One of the most famous questions asked in linguistics – and there are a few – relates to the way language might influence our perceptions, and in particular whether the language you speak restricts your perceptions, or at least forces you to perceive in this way rather than that way. That’s what is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, with more or less strong versions. And while the strong version of their hypothesis (that the language you speak influences your perceptions) has largely been abandoned, milder, so-called weaker versions have been shown to operate in the world. When Frederic Jameson, the literary critic and theorist, wrote his seminal book ‘The Prison-house of language’ (1972), he was partially referring to that idea, something Barthes or, of course, Derrida, were keen to emphasise as well. You inherit the language you speak: from people, from history, from a culture – the language you speak every day is not transparent, it is loaded, it carries ways of thinking that do not, originally, belong to you. Language defines the terms within which you can think, or at least to some extent.

And of course, research in linguistics and cognitive sciences has shown conclusively that those chunks of language – pre-packaged, connotated, socially symbolic – have a way of orienting one’s thinking in certain ways. You could relate that to the idea (Foucault’s, say) that a particular discourse about something (food, science, fashion, poverty, whatever) forces the user of that discourse to think within the terms defined by that discourse.

That is where the idea of terminology comes in. Terminology is basically a form of jargon. Jargon is usually defined as the language of work (as opposed to ‘slang’, the language of identity). Its use is in providing a common, efficient language between specialists: a language that comes pre-packaged with lots of information, condensed in one or two words. ‘The fifth’, in music, is terminology for ‘the 5^th note starting from the first note of a given key’. ‘Syntax’ is terminology for ‘the study of how words are arranged in sentences, and how that interrelationship obtains and according to which rules’. ‘A metaphor’ is ‘a way to talk about item/idea/concept A in terms of item/idea/concept B’: I talk about you (item A) in terms of a ‘rose’ (item B): ‘you are a rose’.

I think we can all agree that terminology is very useful and probably necessary, whichever field we’re in: it carries lots of information, it eliminates the need for explanations of e.g. a concept, and it also signifies a (sort of) fellowship – we both speak the same arcane language inaccessible to most others, something that unites us in some hard-to-define way. And when it comes to the literature class, some of it is needed, either because of the final exams or because it simply makes life easier – or it should, at least.

The problem comes in two ways:

First, like with any terminology, it becomes easy to focus on the term and forget what it actually means: not what it does, not how it works, but what it means. Why do I need to refer to A in terms of B? Why not just say it? What does it add to the meaning to say it with a metaphor? Why tell me ‘You’re a rose’, why not just say ‘You’re pretty and I like you?’.

Gertrude Stein, arch-modernist American writer who lived most of her life in France and who died shortly after the second world war, wrote a poem in which featured the very famous line: ‘A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’. Do you know why she wrote this? Here she is explaining:

You all have seen hundreds of poems about roses and you know in your bones that the rose is not there. Now I don’t want to put too much emphasis on that line [a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose] because it’s just one line in a long poem. But I notice you all know it; you make fun of it but you all know it. Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t go around saying ‘is a…is a…is a…’. Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years. By focusing on Rose as a metaphor, we ended up forgetting that a rose is…a rose, first and foremost. It’s a flower, often red, and it smells good.

Terminology can quickly become a prison-house if we don’t pay attention: we focus on the terms, we focus on learning the terms, and often in spotting where the concept behind the terms is in texts or in exercises. But that’s not what terminology is for: it’s not there to replace the meaning of things, it’s just a tool to by-pass long explanations, or collect together different examples of the same thing. It’s absolutely no good learning a long list of literary terms by heart, just like it makes no sense to learn a long list of symbols by heart: it’s all contextual, and the context is all.

Meaning is not in the terminology, it’s in the text.

The second problem with terminology is a direct consequence of the first: to confuse the tool – which is useful in order to explain a recurring figure (the terminology) – with working with the text where that figure is. Look at John Updike, in his magnificent ‘Self-consciousness’ (1985): ‘How precious each scrap of the world appears, in our first years’ experience of it! Slowly we realise that it is all disposable, including ourselves’. The metaphor can be spotted, but surely it is the way it brings together the two sentences and is then linked to the idea of mortality, emerging from the idea of fragments (‘scraps’). I’m sure there’s another literary term for what he does as well, but this is just to illustrate my point: the text is all; the terminology is a tool, in itself it means nothing.

 

What we can conclude?

That terminology is important, but it should never become overwhelming, over-abundant. It must never be confused with its relevance, which lies in amalgamating different experiences which all share a common core – its relevance is not in explaining meaning: that’s your job and mine.

Terminology should be introduced gradually, on the basis of many repeated examples in texts and not abstracted from their context in exercise books. Their identification should always be followed by a question about ‘why’: Why use a metaphor here? And more importantly, why that metaphor and not another? Is ‘You are a rose’ the same as ‘You are a Venus fly-trap’ (a carnivorous plant)? ‘You are a radish’? Is saying ‘He’s an oak’ the same as saying ‘He’s a willow’? Why not? After all, all of them are metaphors, so what’s the difference?

There’s a famous German 19^th-century book that was written as a sort of spoof on academia, where there was only one line in the main text, and the 250 pages afterwards were taken by footnotes, each generating more footnotes which in turn…you get the idea. This is funny, but it’s not what we should do in class. Let’s not replace engagement with the text with the tools we can use to analyse the text: analysis is not interpretation (click on the link), and terminology is a good reminder of that.

• John Updike: Self-consciousness, 1985 (there are several re-issues, one in Penguin in 1990 for example)
• Gertrude Stein is quoted (during her lectures in America) in Renate Stendhal: Gertrude Stein in words and pictures, 1994.
• A classic exploration of how metaphors influence our perceptions and thinking is of course G. Lakoff & M. Johnson: Metaphors we live by, 1980.
• Any beginner’s textbook on linguistics will have a chapter on Language and cognition, hence on Sapir and Whorf
• The most fascinating volume of introductory essays I know on the subject (and there are many others, to be honest) is in Dedre Gentner & Susan Goldin-Meadow (2003). Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought, MIT. If you like those ideas, check out www.mpi.nl 
  
• The German book is mentioned in Anthony Grafton's The footnote: a curious history (1997)